Category Archives: Dissertation ephemera

[Wall Street Journal] In this Sunday’s Wall Street Journal I’ve got a long review of A. Scott Berg’s new biography Wilson. It’s also an essay on what exactly a biographer adds to any biography. Just four years ago, another excellent … Continue reading →

For their December 1990 issue, the editors of The American Spectator did the same thing they’d done every year since 1976: they asked a few famous writers, academics, and political types to provide book recommendations for the holiday shopping season. … Continue reading →

[Boston Globe] I’m a little late in linking to this, but I wrote another story for the Boston Globe‘s Ideas section — this one on the crazy, opulent history of deluxe presidential memoirs, books that typically come with autographs, artificially … Continue reading →

Earlier this week, we put to rest one of the right wing’s more durable political myths. To celebrate the occasion — and to remind us that these myths can be big or small and can originate on the right or … Continue reading →

I’m switching gears to work on some long-term projects, which may mean fewer story links and deleted scenes. That said, I want to keep writing regularly, so the plan is to do more short, standalone posts. They might be a … Continue reading →

[Washington Post] In Sunday’s Washington Post, I’ve got a long review of two books about the books of Barack Obama — James Kloppenberg’s Reading Obama, which reverse-engineers the ideas in Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope, and Jack Cashill’s Deconstructing … Continue reading →

Next week, I’m reviewing Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown’s new memoir, Against All Odds. But this week I’m researching former Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy’s political megahit, Profiles in Courage, and I just came across a great essay in the December 1961 … Continue reading →